DELL: A Smaller Slice of a Shrinking Pie
Dell (DELL) reported preliminary results for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2007, with revenue of $14.4 billion, operating income of $801 million, and earnings per share of $0.30. Dell ended the quarter with $12.5 billion in cash and investments.
That revenue number marks a decline of more than 5% on a year/year basis. And with Dell shrinking, and both Hewlett Packard (HPQ - Annual Report) and Ingram Micro (IM) expecting revenue growth to slow, we wouldn’t be surprised if the industry as a whole posted lower revenue in the quarter. It wouldn’t be hard, as Gartner was already forecasting it would be flat. Dell appears to have a smaller slice of what may be a smaller pie.
This despite the Windows Vista launch.
Meanwhile, we still have no balance sheet or statement of cash flows due to the ongoing options investigation. Move along, folks. There’s nothing to see here.
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[…] DELL: A Smaller Slice of a Shrinking Pie […]
[…] As far as the health of technology spending, our main interest when looking at Tech Data (whose status as one of the largest tech distributors makes it a decent read on the overall industry,) it didn’t look so hot. Excluding any currency effects sales were up about 5% year/year. Nothing to write home about (though Dell would take it.) Overall, it supports what we’ve seen throughout the industry - a mid-single digit growth rate, roughly in line with nominal GDP growth. Given the double-digit long-term growth estimates we see provided for many tech companies (Yahoo shows 10% for TECD and 15% for the distributors as a whole - what a laugh) investors are presumably hoping for better. […]
[…] After Dell reported a decline and Hewlett Packard, Ingram Micro and Tech Data all showed mid-single-digit gains, one might wonder whether CDW was taking market share after seeing this headline: […]